Vry Strange BSOD - No reason - No Minidump - Please help, desparate :(

Hi All

Please find attched all info asked for in sticky, plus as much extra info as I could give, mostly screenshots. I will try to give as much info as I can, without making it too long, so its a little paraphrased.

Background:

This problem started happening yesterday. The computer had already been on for more 24 hours without any problems. No recent hardware changes at all, nothing for months. Regarding software there have been no new programs installed for at least 4-5 days before the problem started, nor made any driver changes for a while. Far as I know there haven't even been any updates. Last Windows update was at least a week ago I think. Skype updated most recently, but wasnt even running at the time of the problems. It seems that from a hardware/software point of view the BSOD comes right "out of the blue", there is no obvious change I can associate with this problem.

Th problem:

The problem itself seems to manifest in exactly the same way each time. After a restart or turning on the PC will work perfectly normally for a minimum of 30-40 mins and up to about a maximum of 60-75 minutes. Somewhere in this time frame whatever I am doing or whatever program I am using will freeze completely. If I am play games the screen will block, if I am online mozilla will white out... or in windows media or photoshop will do the same. Normally at this point I try to use CTRL+ALT+DEL except it doesnt work, and I will invariably get an error saying task manager cant open. After that it is pretty random, sometimes I will get different processes giving errors and stopping, not necessairly the same ones (see images in attachment for examples). Normally a short time after that everything will freeze completely and then the screen will go completely black, followed by the BSOD. A couple of times the PC restarted without the BSOD, but most of the time its there.

The BSOD:

The BSOD itself gives NO INFO about what caused the crash. At the top there is no IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL or any equlivant error, also no minidump file is produced... I have made sure that the minidump is setup so it SHOULD be made. I have tired with both small dump and kernel dump and neither work

Thing I've done:

Ran Memtest86+ v4.20 for 7.5 hours in which time it amde 4 full passes of the 16GB of RAM. It turned up no errors - see attached file for screenshot of end of test.

Removed 2 by 2 the memory cards, running the 2 that stayed in the machine on slots DDR3_1 and DDR3_2. Error persisted.

Use Driver Fusion (new Driver Sweeper) to completely remove all nVidia graphics drivers and reinstalled latest.

Disabled as many processes on startup as I can, not many are running, I try to keep background "noise" as low as possible.

Ran Checkdisk, but I have an SSD as my C:/ drive so I dont know if that really helps. I installed SSD life Free, but I have 2 SSDs in my PC and the free version only gives info on one - Im not sure which one its testing, but it said it was fine.

I have found one or two forums that kinda suggest that a STOP 0x000000F4 can come from a simple CMOS battery problem - given my symptoms, could this be possible?
Stop: 0x000000F4 - Tech Support Forum

One other thing I noticed which may not be relevent, but if the PC sleeps before the BSOD, it can sleep fine for hours, on waking it works like its just been started, fine for 45 -55 mins or so then crash.

I have given as much extra info in the attachment as I can, all the screens from CPU-Z give my system specs. Images of the errors and bluescreen itself. I re-iterate there are NO NIMIDUMP files because they're not getting made. Also info included from a program called RAMMon.

I really hope someone can help me with this, as I have 2 major problems that make it more difficult. The first is I lost my job recently and have literally no income atm, so even buying a new battery is hard decision - especially if Im not sure it will help at all. Secondly the one year guarentee date for most of the things in my PC expires literally in 4 or 5 days... so if its a hardware problem I really need to identify it ASAP.

I would be so grateful for any help, I know the lack of minidump files dont make it easy, if someone can tell me a way I can get it to make the minidump correctly then I will be happy to do it, Im not sure if its something to do with the C:/ drive being an SSD.

Thanks to anyone in advance,

Gulli


P.S. Sorry forgot to say: I scanned with Microsoft Security Essentials, AntiMalwareBytes and Spybot with no resulting problems.

Try system file checker - sfc /scannow

Thanks, I tired that. At the end of scan I got the message:

Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity voilations.

I am no expert but I am guessing that means everything is ok?

Can anyone explain to me how I can diagnose my SSD drive to find out if there are any errors coming from the drive? There are 100s of different programs for HDD health but none for SSD. I have tired SSDLife, but the freeware version doesnt give enough information to be sure.

Please help...

Update: New Information

The last BSOD I had at the bottom I had a little more info on the minidump not working.

It gave me this error:

Physical Memory Failed with status 0xC0000010

I google this obviously and whats out there seems to be pointing towards the SSD drive, but hardly conclusivly.

I know lots of people need help here but atm I have $2000+ machine that is not suffering occasional problems, its completely unusable.

Oh, and I tried to update the firmware for my crucial SSD, but it keeps crashing and asking if I want to repair windows instead - does that help?

Hi there, I have got the same problem too.
Got BSOD after windows start up for an hour, with STOP 0xF4 (0x3 xxx xxx xxx), and the line stop at "Initiating disk for crash dump..." .
I still can't figure which part of my computer cause this problems, but probably should be the harddisk problem.
I install my Windows on a SSD drive, then have a 1TB HD and a 500GB HD for saving data.

I am at office now so i can't test and fix my desktop.
Can you try to enter safe mode and see if the bluescreen show up again?

Btw, I have done a lot of researches and see 1 post:
BSOD - STOP 0x000000F4 about 10 mins after startup - Tech Support Forum
He seems to have the same problem as us, but he solved the problem with no reason...

You may also see this:
Hard Drive Diagnostic Procedure
See if the DFT helps or not.

Hi Tony,

Thank you so much for your respone. Testing to see if the PC crashes in safe mode was next on my list. For the last few hours I have been trying different memory combinations in different sockets. I am on my last try now.. so next time the PC goes down I will reboot in safemode and see what happens.

I read the other thread you linked and there seems to be one major difference between our problems, is that mine crashes within about an hour EVERY time the PC is switched on. I really hoped this time-frame issue would help to diagnose the problem. The PC never crashes straight away - it always works fine for at least 30 mins, usually more. Then SOMETHING changes and programs start freezing 1 by 1 and the crash follows. I kinda hoped that would give someone a clue as to the problem.

I ran RealTemp and the processor temps are fine... I have a very well ventilated ANTEC case with noctural processor cooling. I dont know if its very likely that the memory could overheat, and Memtest did run for 7 hours with no problems.

As for diagnostics, my SSD is made by crucial and there are no diagnostic tools on their site, I downloaded the firmware update but it wont install, instead I get a message about repairing windows. I have downloaded the Seagate SeaTools for windows and ran all the basic tests and everything came back ok. Still no minidumps being produced. I found a couple of threads that said it could be the CMOS battery. I dont know if the fact that no minidumps are being made points to the drive itself.

There is a person that talks in this thread (Juke Chou) about reasons for no minidump, but I dont really understnd it:
Windows 7 x64 always go to Blue Screen in idle STOP 0x000000F4 Physical memory dump with status 0xC0000010 (Fail to dump)

and heres one of the threads that talks about the battery:

STOP 0x000000F4 - Tech Support Forum

Thanks again, Ill post about safemode when I know.

More info:

I am also using Crucial M4-CT128M4SSD2 SSD. See if the following links help:
https://www.sevenforums.com/crashes-d...tern-seen.html
https://www.sevenforums.com/crashes-d...ml#post1793840

How long have you brought your SSD? As mentioned in the second link, m4 drive become unresponsive after 5184 hours of power-on time (equals to 216 days of time) and need a firmware update.

Hi! Thank you all very much for your answers. Ill start by explain the simplest first:

KarlsNooks: I have already followed all those steps from other posts and stickys. I rechecked everything again and its all setup right except I missed one little thing:

If Overwrite any existing file is checked, then:
Ø Under Write debugging information, select Kernel memory dump
Ø Uncheck Overwrite any existing file
Ø Under Write debugging information, select Small memory dump
Ø OK button

I didnt get this bit right.

I have CCleaner on my PC but so far as I know it only cleans if I tell it to, which I havent. I did uncheck the minidump box anyway.

As regards the SSD and the firmware. I have 2 crucial SSDs on my PC. The first is the C:/ drive and is the older one, bought at the time of the PCs construction almost EXACTLY 1 year ago, its on firmware version 002. The other is newer, from december 2011 and is the F:/ drive used exclusively for games and is running firmware version 009. Now SSDLife Free tells me the 0002 (ie C: crive) has Work Time of 5951 hours (8 months 7 days and 23 hours - powered 1829 times)

Earlier I tired install the windows installation firmware like this and it kept on refusing to install. Instead on restart it jsut gives me a windows repair option before booting normally.

http://edge.crucial.com/firmware/m4/...User_Guide.pdf

I will try the CD version next and see if it works, but heres where it gets a little complicated and I get kinda lost myself. Im not sure if this is relevent at all but when the PC was built the people who put it together didnt bother to change the bios settings before installing windows and the SATA was left in IDE mode. I discovered this after a couple of months while checking something else, at which time I did this to enable AHCI:

GUIDE - Enabling AHCI mode AFTER Windows 7 Installation - Guru3D.com Forums

I double-checked the process to follow on a few sites and did this about 9 months ago. Since then everything has been fine, but could it be this is corrupting the firmware installation now? How should I proceed? Should I put all the SATAs back to IDE (theres three 3 edit in my bios I think) and try again? Or should it work if I use the CD instead of the windows installer? I dont really know that much what I am doing at this level and as there are warnings all over the firmware about messing up drives and data, Im kinda scared to do the wrong thing and no longer be able to start the PC at all. At least I can still use it atm for forums and stuff.

The links about the SSD problem with power on seem very promising, as it looks like my SSD is about the right age for that, but I cant get the damn firmware to install for the moment.

I have to go out for a couple of hours now, I can't get out of it. Ill try these as soon as I get back.

Thanks all again very much - its suprising how alone and helpless you feel when something like this starts happening, especially if your PC is generally more important to you than water, air, food and sex!! :)